The Global Business Innovation ECP will deliver impactful research aimed at increasing the innovation capabilities of private and public sector firms, through a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach with external stakeholders, combining excellence and relevance, and promoting RMIT as an innovation hub.

Research at RMIT aims to solve critical global problems and to deliver significant economic, social and environmental impact.

Unlike conventional discipline-based research structures, the Enabling Capability Platforms connect researchers from multiple disciplines and from across Colleges under a thematic umbrella.

An Enabling Capability Platform is defined by its people, infrastructure, relationships (internal and external), and subject matter expertise.

This allows RMIT to deploy its areas of excellence and strength to comprehensively address critical local, national, regional and global challenges and to nimbly capture emerging opportunities.

The Enabling Capability Platforms will be a major conduit through which breadth and depth is developed in areas of strength resulting in RMIT becoming more widely recognised for its research relevance beyond the academic world.

This Platform brings together inter-disciplinary and applied researchers to address themes connecting governance, networks, technologies, design, culture, people and performance. It includes a specific focus on innovation, value creation, and sustainability from both market and socio-political perspectives. The goal of Global Business Innovation is to promote excellence across the diverse fields of business research as well as to use this expertise in the process of knowledge transfer for the benefit of the economy, society, and the public sector. This Platform comprises global logistics and supply chain management; entrepreneurship and innovation; governance, accountability, and the law; markets, culture, and behaviour; and people, organisations, and performance.

CURRENT RESEARCH PRIORITY AREAS:

Innovation governance and performance

This research area addresses the interplay between innovation, regulation, law and intellectual property. It also considers management control and performance measurement. It further embraces the governance of innovation systems, analyses the framework conditions for innovation to thrive, and explores the mechanisms that support the diffusion of innovation, as well as the socio-technical systems of and conducive to innovation. Finally, it encompasses business ethics.

Organisational transformation and innovation capabilities enhancement

This research area embraces the portfolio of capabilities required to organise and implement innovation, including technology management, leadership and human resource management, process management, ICT-enabled innovation, knowledge management, change management, engaging communication, quality management, supply chain management and optimisation. It also addresses the changes in work practices resulting from the digital transformation.

Collaborative design approaches for innovation

This research area concentrates on the design of innovation ecosystems and platforms, stakeholder engagement, co-creation, creativity, design thinking, business models, foresight, user experience, lead user innovation, value constellations, and ideation. It gathers a set of competences and skills required to engage in an open and collaborative innovation process.

Innovation valuation and impact measurement

This research area concentrates on the measurement, valuation and evaluation of innovation, across units of analysis. It covers policy analysis; ex ante, in media res, and ex post impact assessment; as well as the design and definition of new and alternative metrics and dashboards. Besides the firm-level analysis, it also embraces valuation and impact measurement at other levels of analysis (e.g. nations, teams, projects) or on innovation-related objects such as brands.